Over the last few decades, comic book movies have reached heights of storytelling and spectacle that readers could never have DREAMED of. But for every triumphant high—The Dark Knight, The Avengers—there have always been a good number of stinkers… some bad enough to become punchlines or talking points, but most mediocre and ultimately forgotten…

Until they end up here.

The Discount Spinner Rack is where you’ll find the worst, the weirdest, and the most puzzling of comic book movie misfires. We’ll take a look at the things that actually work and the parts that absolutely don’t, and decide whether it’s worth your time and your dime. In the end, movies will be marked down on a scale from $1.00 (a surprise gem) to $0.05 (better used for kindling). For this spin of the Rack, we’ll be looking at a long-forgotten superhero parody from the tail end of the 20th century, which has lately made a resurgence as a cult classic: 1999’s Mystery Men!

It might be hard to imagine this in the post-Avengers days of 2023, but in the late 1990s, the pop-culture mainstream saw comic book superheroes as… kind of a joke.

Sure, there’d been a couple of big Batman movies at the start of the decade, but there weren’t a lot of successful follow-ups at the genre besides that1I think maybe The Mask was the biggest non-Batman comic book movie for, like, the whole decade? (*checks Wikipedia*) No, wait—it was Men in Black. But it certainly wasn’t anything that the mainstream moviegoing audience would have even RECOGNIZED as a comic-book movie at the time.. And then summer 1997 had featured the three straight flops of Steel, Spawn, and the universally-reviled Batman & Robin—an embarrassing triple-threat that seemed to kill off the comic book’s Hollywood prospects for good. Now, the following year DID see the release of New Line Cinema’s surprise hit Blade… but the first Blade was underplaying its comic-book roots as much as it could—lest anyone think the movie about a trench-coat wearing, sword-wielding vampire slayer was SILLY or anything.

One wonders if our beloved Supermen, Spiders-Man, or Avengers-es would really have caught on as film franchises in the cynical and irony-poisoned late nineties, what with its Reality Bites and its Broadway debut of Rent and its endless vacuous disaster movies. T’was a decade that eschewed romanticism for realness—by which I mean a cultivated skepticism and mistrust about anything that seemed “too good to be true”. It wasn’t exactly the ideal climate into which to sell moral parables about colorful do-gooders righting wrongs and standing for abstract notions of justice while inevitably protecting an entrenched status quo.

But you know what WOULD seem to be an ideal fit for the decade? A parody! A satire of the oddball tropes and outdated stylings of a genre that was easy to depict as a goofy, childish farce. And genre parody was certainly having a MOMENT in the ‘90s; Gen-X-ers seemed to find joy in deconstructions of the artificiality of the pop culture they’d grown up with in films like Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Galaxy Quest, and the Hot Shots movies. But what character(s) would be the ideal vehicle through which to satirize a genre so sprawling, unfocused, and already quite ridiculous on its face?

… Have you ever heard of the Flaming Carrot?

Flaming Carrot Comics was an absurdist indie comic book, written and drawn by Bob Burden, that began publication in the mid-‘80s. The title character was a declamatory half-wit who’d suffered brain damage after reading 5,000 comic books to win a bet, and from thence forth battled evil whilst wearing an enormous carrot mask (with a flame on top) and flippers on his feet (in case he had to swim). Now, the Carrot himself was perhaps a little TOO weird to make the jump into a mainstream motion picture… but along the course of one of his nonsensical, occasionally problematic, dada-ist adventures, the Carrot ran into a group of oddball superheroes called the Mystery Men.

Initially, the Mystery Men were just a group of one-note joke characters with ridiculous gimmicks—like the Shoveler, a man who uses a shovel as a weapon, or Mr. Furious, a guy whose constant anger makes him super-powerful for no reason. But as the characters made more and more appearances, they took on the specific dimension of being blue-collar schlubs: Z-list weirdos with day jobs and loved ones who tried to break into the superhero game, often to no success. They were losers with ridiculous powers and costumes, but more than that, they were underdogs…

… which made them perfect fodder for a ‘90s Hollywood comedy.

Mystery Men was pitched as a movie to Universal Studios by Dark Horse Comics2By that point Dark Horse owned the rights to the Mystery Men and the Flaming Carrot after they’d passed through a few tiny indie presses; eventually the properties would get bought up by Image Comics. in 1997, and producers Lawrence Gordon (Die Hard, Predator) and Lloyd Levin (The Rocketeer, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) snapped the rights up immediately. Initially there were talks with Danny Devito to direct AND star in the film, but he passed on the project because he’d also wanted to produce the soundtrack, but they said “no” (swear to God, that’s not a joke). Next, the producers went to Ben Stiller to rewrite the script and direct—but he turned it down because he was intimidated by the scale of the production (at that point, he’d only directed the mid-budget movies Reality Bites and The Cable Guy).

Ultimately, the studio settled on signing director Kinka Usher, who agreed to make the film his feature-directorial debut. Who is Kinka Usher, you may ask? Well, he was a prolific television commercial director in the ‘90s, best known for his work on the “Got Milk?” ad campaign and for directing the Taco Bell Chihuahua commercials. He’d never done a movie… he’d never done a T.V. show. Just… lots and lots of commercials. He even won awards for it!

But in a comedy, the cast is just as important as the director—and boy, this film had a DOOZY. William H. Macy signed on to play the Shoveler, while Hank Azaria (basically the voice of a quarter of Springfield in The Simpsons, including Moe and—unfortunately—Apu) took the role of the Blue Raja—a superhero who flings silverware as projectile weapons. Janeane Garofalo joined the film as the Bowler (a superhero with a supernaturally-possessed flying bowling ball), while the late Paul Reubens played the Spleen, a character who fights crime with, uh… superpowerful farts. Kel Mitchell (a Nickelodeon mainstay throughout the ‘90s, starring in All That, Kenan & Kel3I gotta be honest: as a kid growing up and watching this stuff on T.V., I always thought Kel would be the one to make it big—but it turned out that his partner Kenan Thompson would be the one to break into more mainstream success by eventually joining SNL. Kel, on the other hand, is still working on Nickelodeon, and he’s also a born-again Christian and a youth pastor. Make of that what you will., and in the movie Good Burger) plays the awkward youth the Invisible Boy—who can only turn invisible when no one is looking at him—and Greg Kinnear nearly steals the whole movie as arrogant sellout Captain Amazing. Eddie Izzard and Tom Waits both have prominent supporting roles (as disco gangster Tony P. and eccentric inventor Dr. Heller, respectively)… and in his American feature film debut, Geoffrey Rush plays the deranged main villain, sporting the single greatest villain name in the history of fiction: Casanova Frankenstein.

Rounding out the cast is Ben Stiller, who was goaded into joining the production by his friend Janeane Garofalo after she signed4The two had worked together on The Ben Stiller Show.. He’d initially been offered the role of the Blue Raja, but turned it down because he didn’t want to play the “nerdy guy” again so soon after There’s Something About Mary. Instead, Stiller went for the role of Mr. Furious, but with a caveat: rather than getting more powerful as he got angrier, Furious would merely THINK he was getting more powerful. Stiller’s pitch for the character was that “if we’re in a band, I’m the guy who started the band but who’s also the least talented.”

The film was released on August 6^th, 1999, and, well… it didn’t do so hot. The studio had delayed the release by a week to avoid competing with the release of The Blair Witch Project, but doing that ran it smack dab into the premiere of The Sixth Sense (1999 was a very crowded year for good movies); on a budget of $68 million, the film only grossed $33 million worldwide, making it an undeniable bomb. But the reviews, while mixed, leaned toward the positive side—and in the years since, the film has garnered something of a cult following.

So what exactly happened here? Did Mystery Men simply miss the mark, or was it actually ahead of its time? What would the caustic pop culture of the ‘90s even have to SAY about superheroes?

IN THIS ISSUE: A satire that’s 50% Joel Schumacher Batman send-up and 50% a piss-take on comic book nerds themselves. Oh, and it’s also structured vaguely like an underdog sports movie?

The film opens with a pastiche of the over-the-top “colorful supervillains crash a themed party in a massive ballroom set” sequences from the Schumacher Bat-films—this one set in a luxury retirement home filled with elderly women doing choreographed dancing on motorized scooters, I.V. racks scattered throughout the attendees, and Tom Waits flirting with the dames by passing them prescription meds. Suddenly, a bunch of bad guys in themed costumes bust in (the Red Eyes, a gang of black clad miscreants with glowing red goggles) and start robbing the attendees of medications and prostheses and causing a ruckus. Then our three heroes—Mr. Furious, Blue Raja, and the Shoveler—triumphantly show up outta nowhere… and start getting their butts handed to them. Much of the fight is shot in low angles and at Dutch tilts, with high-contrast lighting and lots of kinetic camera movement; it’s a stunningly faithful recreation of the aesthetics of a fight scene in Batman & Robin.

But the real biting satire of the piece comes in the form of Captain Amazing, a synthesis of the two major superheroes everyone in the ‘90s would have been familiar with: Superman (flies; doesn’t wear a mask; alter-ego wears glasses) and Batman (no actual powers but tons of gadgets; dresses in black leather; alter-ego is a billionaire). Amazing is the one successful crimefighter in Champion City—so successful, in fact, that he’s also a media icon with statues, billboards, and endorsement deals (his costume is smothered in brand patches like a NASCAR driver). The movie’s shorthand for a superhero is a sports star—doing post-battle interviews while toweling himself off before hopping into a limo with his business manager.

While he’s all smiles and slogans out in front of the cameras, though, we quickly learn that Amazing is actually a raging narcissist and an egomaniac—more interested in money, fame, and glory than helping people. And when he discovers that he’s pretty much wiped out ALL of the major crime in the city, rather than being happy, he’s enraged that he’s out of dynamic enemies to fight in flashy, P.R.-friendly super-battles. So in a bid to put himself back on his gilded pedestal, Amazing—in the guise of billionaire lawyer Lance Hunt—arranges for one of his worst enemies (the aforementioned Casanova Frankenstein) to be freed from the insane asylum, and jump-starts the whole plot.

But yeah—the big iconic superhero is a hypocritical phony, whose heroism is little more than a plastic, capitalist façade for selling toothpaste. It doesn’t get more ‘90s than that.

So if Captain Amazing is an all-star sports celebrity, then our actual protagonists are the inevitable bunch of lovable underdogs who are desperate to play in the big leagues.

The initial team line-up (they never actually call themselves the “Mystery Men”, which becomes a running joke since they can never decide on a name) is just three guys5I don’t know if this was a deliberate reference or homage to Ghostbusters, in which a trio of oddball white dudes start the group and then expand their ranks over the course of the movie, but that’s kinda how I took it.: The Shoveler, the Blue Raja, and Mr. Furious. And while Captain Amazing is a targeted parody of Superman and Batman, the Mystery Men aren’t actually a parody of any particular comic book characters… if anything, I’d say they’re deliberate send-ups of three types of comic book FANS.

The Shoveler is a perfect encapsulation of the Square: someone who takes the simplistic morality of comic books—truth, justice, and the American way!—FAR too seriously, and entirely at face value. As essentially the straight man of the group, William H. Macy plays the Shoveler (a.k.a. Eddie) with all due Superman/Captain America earnestness, with a flattop crew cut and a quasi-military bearing—which makes his deadpan delivery of the ridiculous dialogue (“God gave me a gift. I shovel well! I shovel VERY well!”) all the more hilarious. He also, appropriately, is the only one of the three who’s bought in entirely to the American Dream: we see early on that he has a wife (Jenifer Lewis) and kids, and a house out in suburbia (complete with pool and station wagon). He’s the ultimate blue-collar believer.

Then there’s the Blue Raja, who’s top-to-bottom just a straight up Nerd. Presenting himself as an effete British superhero and “master of silverware”, Blue Raja is all too enthusiastic to explain how his costume is a reference to the British Raj of India (hence the turban), and that the lack of blue in his outfit is actually very historically accurate if you look into it. He’s also VERY resistant to the idea of using knives as weapons, seemingly for no better reason than that they don’t fit his gimmick (“I’m not ‘Stab-Man’! I’m not ‘Knifey-Boy’! I’m the Blue Raja!”). But it all makes sense when you learn that Raja, a.k.a. Jeffrey, is just an American man-child with an Orientalist fetish who still lives with his nosy mom6Back when “still living with your parents” was considered a marker of some serious arrested development as a person, and not just the inevitable result of housing becoming impossibly expensive for anyone below the upper-middle classes.. The Blue Raja is, basically, a LARPer; he’s a big-ol’ nerd pretending to be something he’s not, reveling in the theatricality of it—and Hank Azaria does a spectacular job of letting the dork underneath shine through with his extremely broad performance.

And finally, there’s Mr. Furious… the Try-Hard Wannabe. Furious is a loose cannon… a lone wolf… a leather-clad, motorcycle-riding bad boy who plays by his own rules! Or rather… he really, really WANTS to be that guy. Furious (a.k.a. Roy) has internalized all the most toxic elements of broody, loner “angry man” heroes like the Punisher, Wolverine, Ghost Rider, and, yes, Batman, and turned them into a shield that he can hide all of his human insecurities behind. He’s performatively antagonistic and aggressive, but only because he thinks he’s SUPPOSED to be; it’s as much a defense mechanism as a superhero identity (and the ways he IMAGINES himself in no way lines up with the reality of a roaring Ben Stiller flailing about on a car hood). Predictably, he doesn’t have any close relationships in his life aside from his Super Friends, but all of his assumptions about himself get called into question when he tries to start a tentative relationship with a waitress, Monica (Claire Forlani), who has precisely zero patience for his faux-macho bullsh*t.

So when Captain Amazing gets defeated and imprisoned by Casanova Frankenstein, our three super-fans realize that they’re the only ones who can save him… but to do it, they have to do some recruiting (which is where this really comes to feel like an underdog sports movie, with the little team of nobodies bolstering their ranks so they can play in the championship game). Who do they get to fill out their line-up? Well…

–INVISIBLE BOY: The bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young lad whose energy and naïve optimism help to galvanize the team into action. He’s yet another superhero super-fan, attending conventions and networking with other wannabe superheroes, and his superpower (turning invisible when no one’s looking) is an obvious metaphorical expression of the loneliness and isolation of a sheltered and socially awkward geek.

–THE SPLEEN: The super-geek—avoided by even other members of the geek community. Dresses in outdated fashions, has a face covered in acne, sprays when he talks, and literally smells bad enough to knock people unconscious. Spleen is easily the most unkind depiction of a stereotypical comic nerd; he’s just here to be a punchline (but at least with Paul Reubens in the role, it’s a punchline that lands).

–THE BOWLER: The girl one! A favorite trope of ‘90s comedy or sports stories, the male-centric group gets a single female member who turns out to be more capable than any of the guys (her supernaturally-possessed bowling ball makes her the team’s heavy hitter). But like many women trying to find their way into the comic-fandom landscape, Bowler (a.k.a. Carol) faces either mindless sexist pushback from gatekeeping edgelords like Mr. Furious or unwanted advances from creeps like the Spleen. (I wish I could say things have gotten better in the ensuing twenty-plus years…)

And finally, all of them come together under the tutelage of THE SPHINX (Wes Studi): a terribly mysterious sage superhero who functions as one part Jedi master (teaching in inscrutable and largely formulaic aphorisms, like Yoda) and one part football coach (doling out game plans and leading trust-building exercises).

… Oh, and Tom Waits’ Dr. Heller joins up with them, too.

And as for the forces of evil this team is training to bring down?

Casanova Frankenstein is just, like, a perfect supervillain. Vaguely European, refined but slightly campy, prone to overwritten monologuing, dabbles in mad science… he ticks all the boxes for being a high-end Bond villain, with just a dash of Lex Luthor in there. (He’s also unsubtly queer-coded, because it was the ‘90s and queer-coding bad guys was just de rigueur for the time—see also: nearly every Disney film from the decade.) There’s no nuance or humanity to this character; his evil plan is to use a machine (the “Psycho-Frakulator”) to warp the real world to match the twisted delusions in his head. Why? Because he’s just a capital-B Bad Guy.

But he’s not the only bad guy at the party! The movie also includes a coalition of street gangs, all of them themed and costumed as overtly as villains from the 1966 Batman T.V. show. Early on we meet the Disco Boys, led by Tony C. and Eddie Izzard’s Tony P. (“Disco is NOT dead! Disco is LIFE!”), who dress in ‘70s fashions and work as Casanova’s foot soldiers. Then in act two, we see that Casanova has gathered an ARMY of various gangs, including: the Suits (a bunch of classic suit-and-tie wearing gangsters lead by a fedora-sporting, cigar-chomping heavy named Big Tobacco), the Susies (androgynous Asian assassins in Kabuki make-up), the Furriers (‘60s-style glam girls in bright colored miniskirts and fur jackets), the Not-So-Goodie Mob (literally just the real-life rap group the Goodie Mob), and the Frat Boys (a bunch of beer-swilling, sports-jersey-sporting college jocks led by… wait… is that MICHAEL FRICKIN’ BAY?!?).

For its first two thirds, Mystery Men is all about the idealized fantasy of the superhero running smack into the cold hard mediocrity of reality—from the heroes chuckling amongst themselves as the Disco Boys menace them with guns and wrenches (because it doesn’t fit with the gang’s theme), to the madcap absurdity of the team try-outs in the Shoveler’s backyard (wherein we get uncomfortably dated ‘90s joke superheroes like the PMS Avenger, Ballerina Man—because “gay panic”, you see—and the Waffler, played by a pre-fame Dane Cook channeling his best Jim Carrey). It’s exactly what you’d expect from the time: a cynical deconstruction of a simplistic, childish narrative designed to point out its artifice and absurdity.

But then the third act comes around, and all of a sudden the movie completely changes gear. It stops being a satire of superhero narratives… and tries to BECOME a sincere attempt at a superhero narrative.

… And in doing so, it drags a lot of baggage from the genre into the last twenty minutes or so.

By the final act, Captain Amazing is dead (more on that down below), Casanova Frankenstein is planning to Psycho-Frakulate Champion City at the stroke of midnight, and the Mystery Men are the only ones left who can stand in his way. The team splits off to say their goodbyes to their loved ones: the Shoveler bids farewell to his wife, who’s decided to leave him… Blue Raja “comes out” as an effete British superhero to his mother, who turns out to be delighted with the revelation and gives him more silverware to hurl… and Mr. Furious goes to say farewell to Monica, the waitress that he’s tentatively “dating”. And with that, they’re all ready to come together and stop the bad guys… except for Furious, who (in a brilliant scene we’ll discuss below) is suddenly plunged into an existential crisis as he realizes that the toxic macho façade he’s defined himself by this whole time is bullsh*t, and that he never had any rage powers to begin with.

The team tries their best to psyche Furious back up by pissing him off (“you dress in the manner of a male prostitute!”), but nothing’s taking… and by then it’s too late, because the team smashes an armored truck through Casanova’s castle foyer, and the BIG FINAL BATTLE begins!

The third-act showdown is basically a massive free-for-all between the Mystery Men and all of Casanova’s gangland buddies—and everybody gets their chance to shine! Spleen gets to incapacitate a bunch of gunmen, even with a bullet in the ass; the Bowler gets a one-on-one showdown with Tony P., the guy who killed her father; Invisible Kid finally gets to prove that he has real powers by walking past an electronic eye while no one’s looking at him. This isn’t satire at this point! Though it’s occasionally played for laughs, this is a very straightforward Good Guys vs. Bad Guys fight, wherein our underdog heroes prove their mettle. We’re not laughing AT the Mystery Men anymore… we’re cheering them on.

But the real turnaround comes when Casanova steps out to taunt our thus-far-triumphant heroes by revealing that he’s taken a hostage: Monica, the waitress Mr. Furious was dating. (Wait—what?) Seeing her in danger snaps Furious out of his existential funk and galvanizes him into a fight with Casanova to rescue her! (Hmmm.) Casanova hisses and slashes at him with a sharpened pinkie fingernail…

… but after initially getting his ass handed to him by the freaky Frankenstein, Furious starts growling “rage REALLY taking over…!”—signaling that he’s finally found the rage powers he’s always imagined himself to have. Revitalized by the boundless depths of his new, legitimate fury, Furious turns the tide of the battle—beating the snot out of Casanova (in admittedly silly ways) before flinging him bodily off the balcony and into the beam of the Psycho-Frakulator, to his death.

… Then yadda yadda yadda, the team destroys the machine and escapes from the exploding castle. Huzzah! Everything is now right with the world. Shoveler’s wife and kids finally see him for the hero he is, Blue Raja’s mom watches him proudly on the TV, and Mr. Furious wins the love of Monica, who now happily supports him as the badass superhero he claimed to be. The End!

… Um… I have notes.

First of all, it’s disappointing to see a supposed satire lean into one of the oldest, most obviously sexist tropes in comic books—the damsel in distress—without so much as a hint of irony. There’s no attempt at a subversion here; Monica doesn’t, like, help out during the fight, or outwit the lascivious Casanova, or turn out to be the person with ACTUAL rage powers and save her boyfriend. She just stands off to the side looking scared and helpless as the two men fight over what to DO with her. And of course, she gets to be the happy trophy girlfriend for the guy who saves her life (as opposed to, like, being pissed off that she got caught up in his juvenile superhero lifestyle).

But more glaringly, this is where the movie’s basic messaging becomes a muddled mess. Because for the entire film, it’s been clear that Mr. Furious IS a decent guy, but he’s bought into a fundamentally toxic worldview and self-image that’s made it next to impossible to connect with other people. His lone-wolf, rage-filled persona was essentially anti-social posturing to protect him from having to be VULNERABLE with others, but which only served to make him into a combative jerk and kept everyone at arm’s length. Yet at the end of the movie… it’s getting in touch with his inner rage that saves the day?

Like, I get that the moral is that he was a wannabe poser before, and that it wasn’t until he has something to be genuinely, righteously MAD about that he becomes a real hero. But that just means that the movie is ultimately endorsing the violent, loner angry-man tropes of the comics without seriously interrogating any of the deeply toxic undercurrents that make said tropes problematic. Instead of Furious being a deconstruction of violent macho power fantasies, he just becomes another in a long line of characters celebrating White Male Rage.

… Now, are either of these issues a deal breaker? God, no. It’s a silly comedy! It doesn’t need to single-handedly dismantle EVERY hack-y trope from the medium that birthed it, as long as its heart is in the right place and it makes you laugh. And for a movie from the cynical, irony-poisoned ‘90s, this is a surprisingly sincere film that derives most of its gags from a love of the genre, rather than from mocking derision.

IS IT WORTH YOUR DIME?: Hell yeah! I mean, the comedy’s aged poorly in a couple of places and the direction’s a little janky, but its heart is in the right place, the cast is phenomenal, and there’s a TON of imagination on display here! Plus, it’s worth it all just for Greg Kinnear’s magnificently smug Captain Amazing.

DISCOUNT PRICE: $1.00 (A Must-Buy!)

FAVORITE BITS:

1. Who Can We Get?: Captain Amazing and his publicist Vic Weems (Ricky Jay) hop in a limo after the opening sequence, and Amazing goes into a rant about how lame the battle was and how he’s losing face with his corporate sponsors. The publicist points out that Amazing has cleaned up Champion City so well that there simply aren’t any interesting villains left for him to have battles with. Amazing, flustered, blurts out, “well then get me… uhh… Death Man!” To which Vic flatly replies, “Death Man is dead.” It’s just such a perfect, deadpan response, and it hits you so out of left field that you might miss the follow-up, “Apocalypto’s doing fifty years, Armagezzmo’s in exile, Baron Von Chaos got the chair…”
2. “Just… be… Roy.”: So just before the big final showdown, Mr. Furious meets up with Monica and she asks him his real name. After a minute of waffling about his secret identity, he replies “It’s… Phoenix. Phoenix Dark… Dirk. Phoenix… Darkdirk. I was… I was christened Dirk Steele, and I changed it.” Monica, disappointed, is about to walk away from him, when he finally opens up and admits that his name is Roy. Happy that he’s finally let his guard down with her, she walks over, gives him a big kiss, and softly tells him to “just… be… Roy”—an affirmation that, in a traditional heroic story, would spur the hero on to save the day! … But HERE, it triggers a massive freakout that leaves Roy paralyzed with impostor syndrome and spiraling into an existential crisis. It’s great!
3. The Death of Captain Amazing: So Casanova Frankenstein has Captain Amazing tied to a chair in his basement beneath his Psycho-Frakulator, and the Mystery Men break in to rescue him! Amazing tries to instruct Bowler and Mr. Furious on how to release the bonds on his chair, but there’s a minor miscommunication about how many times to flip one of the switches, while the machine starts ominously thrumming above him. Amazing, sweating and clearly starting to panic, starts berating the two amateur superheroes, until finally Blue Raja walks over to the console and flips a switch… which activates the machine and zaps the captive superhero into a smoking, discombobulated corpse.
   
   Raja, freaking out, sputters, “oh my God… OH, MY GOD, WE KILLED HIM!” … To which the Shoveler, standing on the other side of the room, responds with a deadpan, “what do you mean ‘we’? I was right here.”
   (Also, the looks on their faces right afterwards is priceless:)
   
4. Furiously sorry: At one point, Mr. Furious splits from the team because he resents how quickly they buy into the zen leadership of the Sphinx. But after a talk with Monica, he decides to come back and apologize for his outburst and ask to be let back onto the team… except, when he meets up with the Shoveler, he can’t bring himself to just SAY he’s sorry. After awkwardly trying some small talk, Furious is on the verge of saying the words… but instead he starts to shake and mutter his usual mantra about his “rage taking over!” Shoveler, recognizing what Furious is trying to say, suggests he come along on the team’s mission—and that defuses Furious’s “anger”, taking the pressure off him to apologize. Furious, trying to play it cool, mutters, “that was fast thinking, Eddie.” And the Shoveler, clearly knowing his friend better than either would admit, claps a hand on his back and says, “… well, we wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
5. SO. MANY. ONE-LINERS: This movie is LOADED with quotable lines and fun wordplay! I’ve already gone over a bunch of them in the review proper, but there were a couple extra that I felt deserve spotlighting. First is the Bowler’s description of the mysterious death of her famous father, Carmine: “The police said it was an accident. He’d come home late one night, and fell down an elevator shaft… onto some bullets.” Then, of course, is the Sphinx’s triumphant declaration at the end of the film: “We are number one! All others are number two or lower.” And I’m a sucker for the Bowler’s perfect response when she’s asked if she’d placed her father’s skull into her supernatural bowling ball: “No. The guy at the pro shop did it.”
6. “SoooomeBO-dy…!”: Oh, you didn’t think I’d let the whole review go by without mentioning THIS, did you? Yes, Smash Mouth’s “All Star”—most popularly associated with the Shrek franchise—was actually written and released as part of the soundtrack to Mystery Men! In fact, if you watch the original music video for the maddening earworm, the whole damn THING is built around scenes from the movie:

NEXT ISSUE: I can’t hold back anymore. I was gonna wait until my 30^th review to tackle this one, but I just have so much to say about this friggin’ movie that I decided to tackle it right away. Next time… we’re going to talk about Man of Steel.